Guides to Success - writing great lab reports in IB sciences

Success in Aspect 2 : Data Collection and Processing

Lab Activity Information

Topic 01

Topic 01 - Falling Ball Analysis - Lab Outline and (Rubric)

General Instructions for Submitting IA Electronically

1. download the appropriate evaluation rubric - THIS DEPENDS ON WHAT CRITERIA ARE BEING EVALUATED (see below)
2. Complete the HEADER in the rubric document with your NAME and the INVESTIGATION TITLE
3. COPY and PASTE your lab report into the rubric document beginning on the page after the rubric (DO NOT edit the rubric page in any other manner)
4. save the complete file as "last name"_"first name"_"title of investigation"

Rubric files for download

IS Bangkok Rubrics
Data Collection and Processing (only) IA electronic rubric - DCP.doc

IS Beijing rubrics

1. Rubric 1 - IA electronic submission DESIGN.doc >
2. Rubric 3 - IA electronic submission DCP and CE.doc

Topic Specific Information and Comments

Topic : Special Relativity

Relativistic Mass and Velocity of an Alpha Particle
My comments are related to following instructions carefully so you can get to the point of the exercise. Most of you can produce correct graphs (a nice variety of options in presentation were shown) illustrating that you understand the equations. Hopefully the graphs indicated a number of relationships that may have not been clear before the exercise notably

• the PD increase vs E increase is linear
• the mass increase vs PD increase is also linear (this one is interesting, keep in mind you are calculating mass-energy equivalence here)
• the decay alpha particle is very slow
• huge amounts of energy are required to accelerate a particle to near light speeds - as the particle velocity approaches c, its mass becomes huge. This is the rationale you should apply to argue why the speed of light is impossible, not because the equation says so.